STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Mikey the German shepherd’s first day on Staten Island turned out to be a nerve-racking experience for his new owner that included a massive police rescue and a whole lot more attention than the pup’s family could have ever imagined.

The dog was purchased Wednesday night from a New Jersey farm by Mohamad Awada of Dongan Hills, but before his first morning walk Thursday he managed to get loose and become stranded in a marsh, prompting a two-hour rescue by members of the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit Truck 5.

About 7 a.m., Awada prepared to take Mikey on a walk, but the shepherd got away before he could secure the leash.

As he was running loose, a woman saw the rather large 1-year-old shepherd and began screaming, Awada said.

The canine, probably just as disconcerted as the human, bolted to the end of Nugent Court and continued to barrel through the brush and the marsh until he came to a “river,” said Awada, who was surprised to find a 5-foot-deep river about 15 feet wide just 100 yards from his longtime home.

“That’s really where the tragedy of today happened, because this is deep water, filthy-dirty, this is swamps — and after Sandy, this is all sewage,” Awada said. “And of course the water was too deep, too filthy for me to do anything.”

Swimming through the stagnant, smelly water once was apparently enough for Mikey, who found himself trapped on a silt island between the river and extremely dense brush.

Once Awada realized that he could not reach the dog, he made the decision to call the police about 11:15 a.m., police said.

“He crossed about six or eight feet of slit and four feet of water, and once he did that, he probably didn’t want to come back,” said Sgt. John Jacoby.

At first a few officers arrived on the scene and Mikey backed up, fearful of the gathering crowd.

“We didn’t know if [the police] went into the water to go after him that the dog might run away, and then what do we do; he would just disappear,” Awada said. “So the task was extremely difficult. It wasn’t that easy.”

As more police showed up, Awada worried that Mikey might find a way to work through the dense brush and take off deeper into the marsh, so he sent his wife to get his 11-year-old nephew Ahmed Awada from Petrides School in Sunnyside.

Awada noticed how much his young nephew Ahmed — who lives just around the corner from him — bonded with Mikey the previous evening when he was first brought to the Island.

“They thought that if I was here that he might just swim back,” Ahmed said.

But before Ahmed arrived to test Awada’s theory, Officers, Frank Gigliotti and Min Kim donned dry suits and paddled across the river on a water rescue board that Jacoby described as an “oversized boogie board.”

“We were trying to get him on the rescue board at first, but he wouldn’t go,” said Gigliotti, who was the first officer across. “So then Officer Kim came to assist me, and we were able to get the rope on him.”

Mikey was not having anything to do with the boogie board, but he calmed down when the officers fed him some kibble.

“He was more nervous of the water,” said Detective Hugh D. Gordon. “But he got friendly with the officers real quick once they made him feel that he wasn’t in any danger.”

Carefully after about two hours they attached an animal control noose and nudged Mikey back into the river as they guided him back across to safety.

“Once he was right there he goes deep down into the mud and the dirt, and when they took him out he was like one piece of black charcoal with filthy, dirty sewage,” Awada said. “But they’re beautiful people, nice people, professionals, you know, the NYPD, my heroes of the day, man. Really. I’m so happy.” ---Follow @siadvance on Twitter, join us on Facebook